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according to the structural inter-systemic conflict, e.g. clarification of which system – ego, superego, or id – the predominant defensive organization corresponds to, and which other system the impulse is stemming from. 3. If nonverbal behavior and verbal free associations are incongruent, there may be significant conscious suppression of free associations. The interpretative approach is then to be geared towards facilitating the understanding of the motives for such a suppression and the relevant transferential implications. Here, the interpretation of the transference usually helps to unearth the dominant affect of the session and to determine whether it relates primarily to the verbal free association or nonverbal attitudes. In contrast to Reich (1936) and Gill (1982), but in agreement with Blum (1980), Kernberg posits that if affect dominance and transference dominance diverge, then affect dominance should be given interpretive precedence, even if the affective investment concerns extra-transference issues. In other instances where the free associations and nonverbal attitudes diverge, and if free associations remain at a surface level, Reich’s (1936) recommendation of interpreting defense before content remains valid, such as prioritizing the exploration of transferential implications of a borderline patients’ severe acting out. 4. In relation to the psychoanalytic setting , transferential compromise solutions between an envious idealization and devaluations towards the analyst may take a form of free associations developing seemingly well, but without any real deepening of the transference relationship. This possibly indicates a highly distorted total relation to the analyst and the setting. Here, the analyst may need to resort to a ‘construction’ type of interpretation of this chronic enactment of ‘ resistance to transference’ (Gill 1979). The construction within the ‘here and now’ context can be followed by genetic reconstruction only after patient’s free associations transform the underlying unconscious fantasy of the distorted present relationship into an awareness of the antecedent archaic object relationship (Kernberg 1983, Blum 1980). Recently, Kernberg (2015a) presented an overview of the various ways in which the very process of free association is significantly disturbed in patients with severe narcissistic pathology, as it relates to transference. Kernberg here develops further his earlier (2007) specification of the dominant defensive operations of the narcissistic patient to guard against any authentic dependency on the analyst, as the patient's grandiose self is being activated. In the psychoanalytic work, the most significant issue regarding these patients’ free association is the analyst's recognition that the patient's capacity to free-associate has been distorted by narcissistic pathology. In such cases, the nature of the transference needs to be clarified and worked through systematically before free association can yield any emotionally significant material: “Such extreme cases of narcissism illustrate the relative importance of the analysis of the establishment of the analytic relationship, rather than the analysis of the assumed repressed
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